The old customs house stood a few streets away from the harbor. During the day, clerks filled its rooms with argunts over cargo manifests, taxes, and missing seals. At night, it looked forgotten. Only a single lamp burned behind a shutter on the second floor.
Arthur stopped across the street and looked up at it.
"That’s him?" Felix asked.
Arthur nodded.
Felix leaned on his stick, looking irritated by both his injury and the fact that Arthur had noticed it.
"You were supposed to stay at the annex."
"I considered that," Felix said. "Then I ignored it."
Marcus glanced at the lit window. "One lamp."
"One clerk," Milo added quietly.
The runner had barely spoken since leaving the warehouse. Every ti soone ntioned Naso or Celsus, his shoulders tightened.
They crossed the street together.
The front door was locked. Milo knocked once, then again. For several monts, nothing happened. Finally, footsteps sounded from above.
The door opened slightly.
One eye appeared.
When Naso recognized Milo, he frowned. When he recognized Arthur, all color left his face.
The door imdiately started closing.
Marcus placed a hand against it.
The movent stopped.
For a mont, nobody spoke.
Then Naso sighed the sigh of a man who had spent years watching bad decisions walk toward him.
"What do you want?"
"The truth," Arthur said.
A bitter laugh escaped the clerk.
"Then you’ve co to the wrong address."
Arthur glanced toward the stairway beyond him.
"I don’t think I have."
Naso followed his gaze. The reaction was imdiate. Not anger. Fear.
Not for himself, either.
For soone upstairs.
After a long mont, he stepped aside.
"Five minutes."
The apartnt was small. One table, three chairs, a shelf crowded with tablets, and a narrow bed hidden behind a curtain. A little girl slept in the corner beneath a worn blanket.
Arthur lowered his voice imdiately.
So did everyone else.
Naso noticed.
For so reason, that seed to bother him.
He sat heavily and stared at the table while Arthur placed one of the copied ledger tablets in front of him.
The clerk looked down.
Then closed his eyes.
"Where did you get that?"
"The counting room."
Naso laughed softly.
Not because anything was funny.
Because he had expected this day for a very long ti.
"I told them this would happen."
Arthur frowned.
"Them?"
Naso opened his eyes and rubbed his face with both hands.
"There it is. The question everyone asks."
He pointed toward the tablet.
"You think this belongs to . You think Celsus sits at the top. You think there’s a room sowhere with powerful n deciding everything."
"Isn’t there?"
"No."
The answer ca so quickly that Arthur believed it.
Naso leaned back in his chair and stared at the sleeping child in the corner.
"It started with labor corrections. Workers disappeared. So died. So ran. So were sold. So simply stopped existing. Records needed updating."
His smile carried no humor.
"Then soone realized records could do more than reflect reality. They could create it."
Arthur listened quietly.
"One correction beca ten. Ten beca fifty. A shipnt here. A missing worker there. A tax avoided. A category changed."
"Celsus?"
"Celsus benefited."
"Who else?"
Naso looked genuinely tired.
"Everyone who had a reason."
The answer settled heavily in the room.
Arthur had spent weeks imagining a conspiracy. Sothing clean enough to expose. Sothing with a center.
What Naso described was worse.
No single mastermind.
No secret council.
Just hundreds of people taking advantage of the sa weakness.
One rchant wanting cheaper labor.
One official wanting fewer questions.
One clerk wanting his debts gone.
One noble wanting cargo moved quietly.
Each piece small.
Together, sothing enormous.
"You want a villain," Naso said quietly.
Arthur shook his head.
"No."
"Good. Because all you’ll find are opportunities."
For a while, only the distant sounds of the harbor filled the room.
Then Arthur asked the question that had been bothering him since they entered.
"Why stay?"
Naso didn’t answer imdiately.
Instead, he looked at the sleeping girl.
The answer appeared before the words.
"My wife died five years ago."
Nobody spoke.
"I had debts."
Still nobody spoke.
"They offered help."
The clerk laughed bitterly.
"They always call it help."
Arthur understood that better than he wanted to.
A favor.
A signature.
One small compromise.
Then another.
Then another.
Years later, you discover you can no longer tell where the road behind you disappeared.
Naso stared down at his hands.
"I should have stopped a long ti ago."
"Why didn’t you?"
Again, his eyes moved to his daughter.
Arthur already knew the answer.
A sound interrupted the silence.
Footsteps.
Marcus was standing before anyone else reacted.
Several people.
Moving quickly.
Not drunk.
Not wandering.
Purposeful.
Naso heard them too.
His face went pale.
"No..."
Arthur turned toward the door.
"What?"
Naso wasn’t looking at him.
He was looking at the little girl.
For the first ti, Arthur realized what truly frightened the man.
Not prison.
Not exposure.
Not even Celsus.
He was afraid the consequences would climb the stairs.
The footsteps stopped below.
Then ca a knock.
Heavy.
asured.
Official.
Everyone in the room froze.
A voice called from downstairs.
"Harbor Registry."
Another pause followed.
Then:
"We need to speak with Naso."
Arthur exchanged a look with Marcus.
Neither of them believed that for a second.
Reviews
All reviews (0)